Imaginary Worlds - There's No Place Like Oz

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

In honor of the release of Wicked, we’re hitching a ride on a tornado to hear three different stories about Oz. We hear how the “rainbow chaser” L. Frank Baum failed at every career he tried until he sat down to write The Wizard of Oz. We learn about Baum’s frenemy W.W. Denslow, who illustrated The Wizard of Oz, and then tried to create a competing franchise. And we learn how the author of the Russian translation of The Wizard of Oz convinced the public (with the help of the Soviet government) that the story was written in the USSR. Featuring authors Michael Patrick Hearn, Robert Baum, and Olga Zilberbourg. This week’s episode is brought to you by Henson Shaving, Sol Reader and Dragon Ball Legends Go to solreader.com to and use the code IMAGINARY at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase of Sol Reader Limited Edition. Visit hensonshaving.com/worlds to pick the razor for you and use the code WORLDS to get two years' worth of blades free with your razor – just make sure to add them to your cart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. When I was a kid, I discovered I had an ability to completely detach my mind and live in my imagination. It started with action figures. Eventually, I could just disappear at will. When I was in a trance, I could still hear my mother's voice saying, Earth to Eric, Earth to Eric, come in Eric.

I remember one day my mother was talking about someone we knew, and she said that that man was a Luftmensch. It's a Yiddish word for someone whose mind is in the clouds to their own detriment. And I thought, there's a word for that? As a Luftmensch myself, I've always been drawn towards stories of other Luftmensch. Around 20 years ago, I was working for a public radio show called Studio 360. They assigned me to work on an audio documentary about the Wizard of Oz. That's when I learned that the 1939 movie with Judy Garland was based on a children's

book from the early 1900s. And when I read about the author of that book, L. Frank Baum, I understood this guy at a core level. Michael Patrick Hearn is one of the leading experts on L. Frank Baum. No one creates a secondary world like the land of us who's happy with the world as it is. I think there are a lot of things that Baum was not happy about his life and about America. And I think there is always a sense of skepticism, that you don't trust that man behind the curtain. I certainly think that's something that comes out in the Oz books. L. Frank Baum has been on my mind lately, because when I'm not happy about the world,

I default to my coping mechanism. It's so automatic at this point, the way my mind just keeps going right up to the clouds to avoid thinking about what's on the ground. But you can't defy gravity forever. The witch in the musical Wicked had to learn that. And speaking of Wicked, the movie version comes out this week.

The wonderful Wizard of Oz summons you to the Emerald City. Come with me. What? To meet the wizard. Why couldn't you tell me this is your moment? I'm coming. So in honor of Wicked and Thanksgiving, when my local TV stations used to always play

The Wizard of Oz, I've taken material that I've done about Oz over the past 19 years and remixed it into three interconnected stories about people who tried to get to the land of Oz, one way or another, even if it wasn't really possible. The shaving industry has been as bleak and gray as Kansas was depicted in the Wizard of Oz film. For years we've had these multi-blade razors, which cause irritation when I shave. The razor blades don't last long, and I can't believe how expensive they are to replace.

But Henson Shaving has found the emerald city of razor blades. But they don't use gimmicks like the man behind the curtain. They did groundbreaking research into the impact that shaving has on your skin. When Henson looked at other razors, they noticed that most commercial razor blades have too much bend or flex. Henson makes their razors in their Aerospace Machine Shop that also makes parts for Mars Rover and the International Space Station. That level of precision is one of the big reasons their razor is so much gentler on your skin. And once you own a Henson razor, it's only about $3 to $5 a year to replace the blades.

The razor itself is made of aluminum, and there's no plastic. That's important to me because every year 2 billion plastic razors end up in landfills. Henson's packaging doesn't even have any plastic. That's important to me because every year 2 billion plastic razors end up in landfills. Henson's packaging doesn't even have any plastic. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash worlds to pick up the razor for you and use the code WORLDS to get a free shave cream with your razor. Just make sure to add it to your cart. That's a free Henson shave cream when you head to h-e-n-s-o-n-s-h-a-v-i-n-g dot com slash WORLDS and use the code WORLDS. It all started with Lyman Frank Baum.

As a young man, he failed at every career he tried. Baum couldn't make it as an actor. His newspaper flopped. He tried to sell crockery, fireworks, and steal goods. In 1888, he opened a general store called Bombs Bazaar in a frontier town in South Dakota and tried to sell gourmet chocolates and Chinese lanterns. But it wasn't flailing around.

He was 110% committed to every one of those jobs. Again, Michael Patrick Hearn. Bombs was literally a rainbow chaser. Nothing could be done second rate. If he was going to open a store, it was going to be the best store. If he was going to sell axle grease, it would have to be the best axle grease.

If he was going to sell chickens, they had to be purebred chickens. I spoke with another expert on L. Frank Baum. My name is Robert Baum, and I am the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum. My name is Robert Baum, and I am the great-grandson of L. Frank Baum, the wonderful author of The Wizard of Oz. In the 1890s, Robert's great-grandfather moved the family to Chicago in search of more work. That's when L. Frank Baum discovered that he had a

natural ability, telling stories. And when they were in Chicago, he would tell stories to the kids, same as he did anywhere. Usually he could find him on his bazaar or at the newspaper, wherever he was sitting down in the evening telling stories to the kids. We think that's where some of the ideas for Oz came from. His favorite time was after dinner, right before bedtime.

He would tell stories to his children, and he'd create these wonderful magical stories. And the princess gave them everything she had found. And what happened then? What happened? Oh, what do you think happened then? They lived happily forever at home. His mother-in-law spent her winters with the bombs and she said you better write these down Frank, you're fool not to. Matilda Jocelyn Gage wasn't just the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum.

She was a trailblazing historical figure in the women's rights movement. Her legacy is so huge, I did a whole episode about her earlier this year called Mother-in-law of Oz. I highly recommend checking it out. When Michael looks at The Wizard of Oz, he can see the influence of Matilda Jocelyn Gage on the character of Dorothy. She is the quintessential pioneer girl.

There's nothing lady-like about her in the traditions of most children's literature at the time. She's thrown into the situation and nothing's going to keep her from solving her problems. She even loses her temper and that's why the Wicked Witch is destroyed, is because she loses her temper and throws a bucket of water on her. This is a pivotal moment in children's literature. It's the first time a child is allowed to lose its temper and not get punished for it. Michael says part of what's groundbreaking about The Wizard of Oz is that it feels very American. At that time, a lot of children's books were European fairy tales or written in that style.

A lot of fairy tales are regressive, a reaction, looking back to another era, almost really looking into the future. He embraced technology. The Tin Man, or the Tin Woodman, as he's called in the book, is a person who replaced his human parts with mechanical ones. Today we'd call him a cyborg. Even the fact that the character is made of tin

is a modern idea. Industrial tin canning was invented in the 19th century. In one of the later Oz books, Baum created a fully mechanical robot called TikTok, spelled like the social media platform except with a hyphen. TikTok was so ahead of his time, the 1985 movie Return to Oz featured TikTok as a steampunk R2-D2 type character and they didn't change his design very much from the original books. Good morning little girl. Good morning sir. Are you Dorothy Gale? Yes sir. Pleased to meet you. I am TikTok the Royal Army of Oz. He was probably the first important writer of children's books, certainly American children's

books, to have faith in the machine as an object that can be worked into his stories. And he even calls magic and Oz a science. You have to learn it, you have to learn its secrets, and then you're able to control it. Baum finally found success with the Oz books, but that didn't make his life any easier. He wanted to end the series after six books and move on to other stories, but they didn't sell. So he tried to build a franchise out of the one thing he got right.

Again, Robert Baum. It filled the need, but it was also what he really did best and everything he did just kind of came circle back into it. Oz was easy. Oz was what most of the kids wanted to hear. I have not seen all of the letters but I know that many family members would talk about all of the letters that would come in and I think he really truly tried to fill the needs that the children were clamoring for. Around this time, he moved the family to Hollywood. They moved out here about 1910, partly for his health and partly because I think he really

realized that Hollywood was probably going to be the next jumping off place for entertainment, especially with movies. Baum actually started his own movie studio. In fact, his Oz films were some of the earliest movies made in Los Angeles. And he cast unknown actors who would become stars like Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach. What was interesting about the films

is that everyone had an original score, which was almost unheard of at this time. And this was like the first scoring of motion pictures. And his ideas, I think, were well ahead of their time. He wrote The Scarecrow of Oz with the idea of, first of all, he's going to do movies for children. He's going to do the movie, then release the book, and then he had toys to go with it. Unfortunately, he was just a little ahead of his time.

And there was some guy that came after him, I'm trying to think of the name. Yeah, it was Disney, that was it, who kind of did those things. I think he was probably just 20, 30 years too early. Also his business sense hadn't improved since he tried selling gourmet chocolates and Chinese lanterns on the frontier of South Dakota. For example, He decided that he was going to do a book tour unlike any other book tour. At that time, people would travel around the country giving travelogues, usually their trip to China or to Japan. Baum decided how about a travelogue to Oz, which was a combination of hand-colored slides and

hand-colored motion pictures. Sometimes with an orchestra he would narrate these films. Even though he got terrific reviews, there were not a lot of people coming to this. And he was also asking theatrical prices for a children's show. Unfortunately, Baum had invested his own money. Even though 1908 was the best year he ever had of selling his books, he couldn't meet the expenses. He had borrowed money to produce these films, which were very expensive. Not only did he have to pay for actors to come in, also the the cameraman, the director, all these people and the staging, the costumes, the scenery. He also sent them to France to be hand-colored,

which was also an enormous expense, and he went bankrupt. But Baum was the eternal optimist, taking his failures in stride. I think Baum took a lot of hits in his life, but he always came back smiling. And he could always escape into his imagination. I think maybe Oz was home for him because it was always the same. He could make it as he wanted it to be, and it was a friendly place without any of the problems that daily life would dish out to him or any of the business failures that he was presently worrying about.

To some extent, his spirit may have actually gone to Oz after he passed away, Or at least, the closest thing to Oz in Los Angeles. Well, well, well, houseguests, huh? And who might you be? When the movie was being made in 1939, the costume department was fitting Frank Morgan for his role as Professor Marvel from Kansas. That's the other role he played besides the wizard. You're running away. How did you guess?

Ha ha, Professor Marvel never guesses, he knows. The costume department went to a thrift store and found the perfect shabby old coat. When Frank Morgan looked inside, he saw the name L. Frank Baum stitched into the pocket. Baum's widow, Maude, confirmed that was her husband's coat. There's a lot of skepticism about that story. It almost seems too good to be true, like a publicity stunt.

But people who worked on the production swore that it really happened. When I want to shut out the world, one of my favorite escapes is to read a book. And I mostly read e-books to save space in my apartment. But it's hard to be a reader in 2024. You have to somehow ignore your inbox, ignore social media, try not to doom scroll, and just when you're getting into a book, a text message pulls you right out of it. That's why reading technology company Soul

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Check out the sole reader at solereader.com to start reading without distraction. And use the code IMAGINARY at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase of Soul Reader Limited Edition. limited edition. When I was a kid, I watched The Wizard of Oz whenever it was on TV. Although I wasn't a huge fan, I mean I recognized that the performers were incredible, but the movie itself felt stagey to me. I could see the seams in the costumes. I felt like the camera was always just about to catch a microphone hanging above the actors. But when I first came across the original book from 1900,

I was enchanted by the illustrations. They were so charming. The illustrations were drawn with bold, simple, confident lines. The shapes of the characters were funny, with big heads and little bodies. The expressions of the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were as human as the actors in the movie,

but they looked like they were made of straw and tin. Dorothy was much younger than Judy Garland and scrappier. And the lion was a lion, like a big lion, but he's wearing spectacles, and he has a tiny bow in his hair. The artist was William Wallace Denslow, or WW Denslow. I had never heard of him. Had he illustrated more classics,

we probably would know more of his books, but, you know, other than The Wizard of Oz, he's pretty much forgotten. Again, that is Michael Patrick Hearn. He wrote biographies about L. Frank Baum and W.W. Denslow. And the story of their collaboration is wild. Baum and Denslow met in Chicago. Back then, Baum was burning through odd jobs.

Trying to be a writer was just another one of his side gigs. He was in the market for an illustrator, and Denslow was looking for work. The two men had very different dispositions. Baum came for money, which gave him a cushion to keep failing at different careers. Denslow was from a hardscrabble background. He was a heavy drinker, but he was about to go sober.

Baum was happily devoted to his wife. Denslow went through several marriages. But when these guys started working together, it was like magic. The boys, Baum's four sons, always spoke of the wonderful smell of Baum's cigars and Denslow's corn cob pipe while they were working. And they cut up a couple schoolboys, this is how they described each other. They really enjoyed each other's company. And they had big ideas. They wanted to use color plates, which was a new technology at the time, a very expensive technology. The printer wouldn't pay for the color illustrations,

so Denslow and Baum paid for them out of pocket. There are 24 color plates. There are over 100 two-color textual illustrations that change as Dorothy goes from one place to another, from gray Kansas to the blue Munchkin country to the green Emerald City. And eventually they go to the south where Glinda lives, which the favorite color is red.

So you have, it's like a rainbow effect when you leaf through the book. Oz was the second book that Baum and Denslow worked on. The first book you probably have never heard of. I mean, it sold very well at the time, but if The Wizard of Oz hadn't sold, their third book would have been something else. They were just hoping to turn a profit.

They did not expect Oz to become a phenomenon. The sort of competition between the two of them, who was responsible for the success of their books, certainly the illustrations were the first thing that grabbed people. But the Wizard of Oz, the text and the illustrations, it really is a marriage between the two of them. A marriage that was about to end in a messy divorce. In 1902, they signed a contract for musical comedy of The Wizard of Oz, and it turned out to be the wicked of its day.

It was the most successful musical comedy of the time. Oh, it was literally wicked. Yes, it was. It was wicked, yes. It was, exactly. It wasn't just like it. It wasn't just like it, yes. It was wicked of

1902 and it was in it was enormously successful there were two touring companies the musical comedy made bomb and Denslow wealthy men well even more than the books even more than the books yeah and bomb because Denslow owned half the copyright and control of the book, had to pay him half of what his royalty was from the musical. Although Denzlo had very little to do with the musical, and I think Baum resented that. Denzlo wasn't being lazy. He was unhappy with the changes the producers were making for the stage adaptation.

Baum was unhappy too, but he stuck it out and kept trying to argue their case. The show still ended up being very vaudeville. For example, Dorothy became a young woman rather than a little girl. Toto becomes a cow named Imogene. The wizard becomes a wisecracking Irishman. And a lot, a lot of marching girls in tights. Baum and Denslow parted ways. At this point, Denslow was getting illustration offers left and right.

He was so famous, he could slap his name above the title. So when he illustrated Humpty Dumpty, it was marketed as Denslow's Humpty Dumpty. Meanwhile, Baum found a different illustrator to work on the sequel, a guy named John R. Neal. Neal went on to become the regular illustrator of the later Oz books. I didn't like Neal's illustrations as much as Denslow's.

Neal's style feels antiquated now. It's very much of the time. When you look at most children's book illustrations at that time, they're over crosshatched. They're so crosshatched. They're so very fussy. There's a lot of sentimentality in the drawing. The style of Denslow, that bold black and white, the flat color, I mean, it still looks

modern. Baum and Neill tried to drum up interest in their sequel to The Wizard of Oz by creating a newspaper comic strip. And then they discovered that Denslow also wrote a sequel to The Wizard of Oz, and Denslow was also creating a comic strip to drum up interest because Baum's former partner still owned half the copyright. Denslow's book was called Denslow's Scarecrow and Tin Man. And even though he wasn't happy with the musical adaptation, Denslow's Scarecrow and Tin Man. And even though he wasn't happy with the musical adaptation, Denslow recognized its success.

He came up with a very meta story where the characters from the first book were performing in the Broadway musical, playing themselves, and then the Scarecrow and the Tin Man leave the theater when they weren't supposed to. It was obviously designed to be a sequel to the musical as well as to the book. It was dedicated to Montgomery and Stone who played the Scarecrow and Tin Man in the musical comedy.

So did they change even the characterizations where suddenly the wizard was an Irish drunk and there were dancing girls? Well it wasn't quite that bad. Really, it was a little scary. Wait, so so when they leave are they in New York City? In New York City, yes. They steal a car, they get into all kinds of trouble. It's really the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, not Fred Stone and David Montgomery, so they're very naive at what can possibly happen in New York City.

So at this point, Denslow is flying high. He got remarried and he had enough money to spend his winter's drawing in Bermuda. One day he was going through the, going around the islands and there was one island that was for sale. It's now known as Bokes Island, but Denslow purchased it. He built a mansion on it, and he declared himself King Denslow I of Denslow Island. Was this jokingly, or did he in any way

sort of have any delusions of grandeur? Oh, of course he had delusions of grandeur. I think almost every ego, every artist's ego has some sort of delusions of grandeur. Oh, of course he had delusions of grandeur. I think almost every ego, every artist's ego has some sort of delusions of grandeur. I guess anyone who declares themselves king of an island. Yes. At the time, the press thought it was pretty funny too, but Denslow's kingdom was about to crumble.

He had taken on too much work. His next few books were not about Oz and they didn't sell as well. He was working on a musical, which fell through, and the stress got to him. He started drinking again. Well, one thing you have to also recognize, if you had a reputation as a drinker in those days, it wasn't considered a disease. It was considered a sin. It was considered a flaw in your character. There were a lot of prejudices against someone who drank in those days,

particularly if you're trying to do children's books. I think he may also have suffered a bit from manic depression, these highs and lows. And then, I mean, when things were going well, he was in great spirits, but then he could fall down and be very depressed. His third wife left him. He sold the island.

For a man who would be king, his career got very small. He sold a cover design for the Old Life magazine, which was a humor magazine. And this was probably the most significant sale he had had in several years. He got a nice check from it, he went to celebrate, evidently he was going from bar to bar to bar or something like this. He went on a jag, as they say in those days. And he caught pneumonia and died. He was buried in a pauper's grave, an unmarked grave, that only recently was a marker put

up to signify that the illustrator, the Wizard of Oz, was buried here. Denslow was only 58 years old. At the time, Baum was living in Los Angeles. He was told incorrectly that Denslow had taken his own life, which may not have seemed unreasonable, given Denslow's reputation. When I first read The Wizard of Oz and came across those illustrations,

I asked some friends if they'd ever heard of Denslow. I was surprised that they had, but what they had heard was the story about him declaring himself king of an island. They had never seen his drawings. But I think his legacy goes beyond the drawings. The famous illustrators and animators of the 1930s and 40s must have grown up reading The Wizard of Oz. His drawings must have been some of the first illustrations that captured their imaginations. I mean, I can see his influence on Dr. Seuss or the artist who

created Looney Tunes. And Baum and Denslow's work also had a big influence in a country that may have seemed even stranger to them than the land of Oz. This episode is brought to you by Dragon Ball Legends, the ultimate Dragon Ball experience on your mobile device. Dragon Ball Legends features action-packed, action RPG gameplay with Goku, Vegeta, Trunks, and all your favorite Dragon Ball characters. Summon your favorite characters from popular Dragon Ball anime series, such as Dragon Ball Zet and Dragon Ball GT

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Download Dragon Ball Legends today, available for free on both iOS and Android devices. Oga Zilberberg grew up in the Soviet Union. When she was a kid, her favorite book was The Wizard of Emerald City. And she loved the book because of the main character. This had a girl protagonist. Soviet books did not have girls as protagonists. And that was really exciting. As we all know, the protagonist of the story is Ellie Smith, who lives in Kansas with her parents until a hurricane

took Ellie and her talking dog to Toshka, to the Magic Land, where they met a wizard named Goodwin. Yeah, the guy who translated The Wizard of Oz into Russian took a lot of liberties. And the publishers put his name on the cover, Alexander Volkov. And then Volkov went on to write sequels to his version of the story,

which had nothing to do with the sequels that L. Frank Baum wrote. In fact, if someone had told young Olga that an American named L. Frank Baum was the real author of The Wizard of Emerald City and the first book in the series was just a translation, she would have thought that was American propaganda. It would have been very strange. I don't think I would have believed it.

Yeah, I don't think I would have believed that Volkov didn't create it. Alexander Volkov grew up quite poor, and he was a self-taught scholar. In 1934, a friend lent him the original book. Volkov loved it so much he didn't want to return it, so he made a project to translate it into Russian. He also had young kids and he wanted them to read it. Olga says in the USSR, authors of children's books often saw themselves as being on a mission

to invent a new type of literature for Soviet children. And as far as the government was concerned at the time, international copyright laws had no jurisdiction behind the Iron Curtain. This was not unprecedented for an author to take an old story and to change it in a way that would feel more suitable for Soviet children. You know, he's writing this as somebody who is a big fan. It's maybe a little bit like a fan fiction.

So the corn fields of Kansas were changed to wheat fields, which was a big crop in the USSR. The Wicked Witch of the West became more like Baba Yaga, who was a witch type character from Russian folklore. The Wicked Witch of the East created the hurricane, not tornado, which brought Ellie to the magic land, because the witch was angry that humanity was destroying the environment. The Soviet Union was all about trying to change the environment, trying to modify the environment

in which we lived to make it serve people. And that was not the only subtle critique of the government in Volkov's version of the story. Some of the fears of the 1930s are reflected in his retelling. Goodwin represents a Stalin type figure, and Oz in this version is Goodwin, somebody by name Goodwin. He is somebody who is a feared person by everyone in the kingdom and in this land. Nobody who mentions his name is happy about him or wants Ellie to go there. What's

interesting too is that when Scarecrow ascends to Oz's position, he all of a sudden starts Kierkrow ascends to Oz's position, he all of a sudden starts to think of himself as somebody who must be obeyed and who can give orders. He becomes quite a nasty person all of a sudden. You know, there's awareness of the position of power that instills fear in people and that it must do so. But the biggest change was Volkov's description of Kansas. In the original book, Baum described Kansas as very drab and gray,

like the way it was depicted in the movie. But Volkov made the farmers into a glorious proletariat. They looked out for each other. And while Ellie had fun in the decadent bourgeois emerald city, there's no place like the homeland. And as a kid, Olga didn't dream of going to the magic land. She wanted to see this place called Kansas.

Oh, absolutely. Kansas was the dream. Yeah, it was we I remember when I was older, like 10 or 11, a friend, my friend and I who had read the books and we had like the whole six set of Volkow's books, we we got dug a hole that went to Kansas, we dug a hole in our sandbox. And there was a pretty massive hole, actually. Wow. Have you been to Kansas? I have, actually. I have. My husband and I drove cross country ones from Boston to San Francisco. And we absolutely went through Kansas because I had to go there. Yeah, I mean, obviously you didn't go in with the mind of a child, you know, but what did you think compared to your image of Kansas?

It was, actually it was a pretty emotional experience. I remember it was very, very windy. It was probably the strongest wind I've seen. And it was a striking place. So the flatness of it, or the flatness of the highway we drove on was striking. And I remember,

I forget what they called those plants that roll around. Oh, tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds, yeah. I picked up a tumbleweed and I kept it for years and years until it disintegrated into dust. Oh my God, wow.

When I spoke to Olga, she had just been reading the Russian version of the book to her son, even though they live in California. Something about it, like for instance, the dog Toto, he can talk. He's cute and funny and he has some of the best lines and he's very helpful. And then I mean, it's inevitable that growing up in the US, I think it is inevitable that

he'll come across The Wizard of Oz, the real story on his own. But I do think that there is room for this book. Olga says she still sees the world through the lens of having grown up in the Soviet Union. And Volkov's version of the story reminds her of home, even if she knows that her homeland was no Kansas. This book is my culture. It's a part of the culture that I have to give,

which is Soviet culture. And I'm really grateful for Volkov for adapting it in the ways that he did that made it acceptable to the censors, to the editors, to the whole publishing structure. Volkov's version of the story is still popular in Russia today. In fact, in 2025, there's going to be a big-budget movie with pretty good-looking special effects in which a modern-day version of Ellie Smith and her talking dog Titochka go to the Emerald City and meet the lion, scarecrow, and tin man. It's a bit too good to go. In the same way that Olga didn't know about Bombs book when she was growing up, I wonder

how many fans of Wicked, especially younger fans, know the 1939 movie. Even if they have seen it, maybe that's not their Oz. That's not their Glinda. That's not their wizard. But that is the beauty of a world which captures people's imaginations. It doesn't matter where it came from, especially after the copyright has expired. What matters is that it's still here after 124 years. That's a pretty good legacy

for a man whose head was in the clouds. He brought the clouds down to earth. But it wasn't a dream. It was a place. And you, and you, and you, and you were there. Oh, that's good. But you couldn't have been, could you? Well, we dream lots of silly things when we...

No, Aunt Em. This was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Michael Patrick Hearn, Robert Baum, and Olga Zilberberg. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. We have a new show called Between Imaginary Worlds. It's a more casual chat show that is only available to listeners who pledge on Patreon.

Last week, I talked with Caro Murphy. I've had Caro on the show before, and last time we talked, they had just started running the Galactic Star Cruiser Experience at Disney World, which was a combination of a Star Wars-themed LARP and a hotel. Now that it's over, Caro can tell me what happened behind the scenes, like how the pandemic disrupted their supply chain. And if those shipping lanes are stopped, you don't have a lightsaber because you don't have

the parts to be able to replace that lightsaber. So if your prop breaks, you are hot gluing it together in the back room and hoping and praying it stays together. Between Imaginary Worlds comes included with the ad-free version of the show that you can get on Patreon. You can also buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts. If you donate to the show on Patreon, at different levels, you get either free Imaginary World stickers, a mug,

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